She had once ruled part of it, for a few months, under a title that was not quite queen. Matilda was fifty-two when her son inherited the kingdom she had been promised herself.
On 25 October 1154, King Stephen died, and Henry of Anjou succeeded him as Henry II. His mother, Empress Matilda, had spent years contesting Stephen's possession of that kingdom. His wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had already been queen of France. Between them, the two women had given the young king a claim to England and a great inheritance across the Channel. Neither had come to him easily.
Matilda was Henry I's daughter. Her brother William had drowned in the White Ship disaster in 1120, leaving their father without a legitimate son to succeed him. The king turned to his daughter, and in 1127 required his bishops and magnates to swear that they would recognise her as his heir. Among the men who swore was her cousin Stephen.
She was already an experienced ruler. Sent to Germany as a child, she had married Emperor Henry V and taken part in his government. During his absence she had governed in Italy. Widowed, she returned to her father's world, bringing the imperial title with her. Her second marriage, to Geoffrey of Anjou, produced the son who would eventually inherit England.
When Henry I died in 1135, Stephen hurried to London and secured the crown. The oath had survived rather better while the man who demanded it was alive.
Matilda crossed to England in 1139 to pursue her claim, supported by her half-brother Robert of Gloucester. In 1141, Stephen was captured at Lincoln. For a time she was recognised as Lady of the English, and the work of ruling passed into her hands.
One of her charters concerns the nuns of Godstow, near Oxford. She confirmed their right to hold a fair lasting three days for the feast of St John the Baptist. Those coming and going, and their goods, were to have her firm protection, and anyone who disturbed them would pay ten pounds. The document addressed her justices and barons, Normans and English, and identified the woman issuing these commands as empress, King Henry's daughter and Lady of the English.
There were people to protect, rights to confirm and orders to enforce. She was doing the work without the crown.
London drove her out before she could be crowned. Robert was captured later that year, and in November the two prisoners were exchanged, the earl for the king. Stephen went free; Matilda's chance of replacing him receded. In 1142 she was besieged in Oxford Castle and escaped across the frozen Thames, cloaked in white against the snow. The woman whose protection had been promised to visitors at Godstow was having considerable difficulty securing her own.
By 1148 she had returned to Normandy, and her son took up the struggle. His father, who had conquered Normandy, handed the duchy to him; when Geoffrey died in 1151, Anjou followed. In 1153 Henry campaigned again in England. Stephen's son Eustace died that year, and a settlement followed: Stephen would keep the throne for life, and Henry would succeed him.
The agreement left Matilda's own claim behind. It carried her son's forward.
That was the arrangement which took effect in October 1154. Henry was twenty-one. The inheritance denied to his mother had reached him while she was still alive to see it secured.
Eleanor brought another history of inheritance into the new reign. She had become Duchess of Aquitaine on her father's death in 1137. Her marriage to Louis VII made her queen of France, but the duchy was hers by birth. When that marriage was annulled in 1152, her possession of Aquitaine outlasted her place beside the French king. On 18 May she married Henry, then Duke of Normandy and Count of Anjou.
Eight days later, at Poitiers, a charter was issued in her name confirming her ancestors' gifts to the monastery of Montierneuf. Her father and grandfather had granted possessions and protections; Eleanor confirmed them, extended her own protection and ordered the document authenticated by her seal. It promised the monks freedom from disturbance by any power, her own relatives and all her successors included.
Marriage had changed the titles she used. The authority to confirm her family's grants was still hers.
Henry's position in Aquitaine depended on his wife, just as his English inheritance depended on his mother. The territories his marriage joined to his existing lands made him a far greater prince than a claimant waiting for Stephen to die. Eleanor was entering England's royal family with a substantial inheritance already attached to her name, and experience of what happened to a queen when a marriage ended.
In December, Henry and Eleanor crossed to England. On 19 December he was crowned at Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Theobald, with Eleanor there as his queen. She was pregnant again, having already borne him a son, William. The succession which had consumed so much of Matilda's adult life now had another generation behind it.
Matilda remained in Normandy. Her household near Rouen often merged with her son's court when he was there, and for the rest of her life she acted as his representative, presiding over the government of the duchy whenever the king of England was elsewhere. She had stopped calling herself Lady of the English when she left England in 1148, and went back to the title she had brought from Germany. The woman who had been promised a kingdom was governing a duchy for her son, as the Empress, and still without the crown.
